Medhayate

Medhayate (मेधायते) is Sanskrit for "sharpens one's own intellect". It is a small collection of thinking games that runs entirely on your phone.

THE GAMES

• Tic-Tac-Toe — three difficulties. Hard plays perfectly, so a draw is the best result possible.
• Minesweeper — 9×9, 12×12 and 14×14 boards. Your first tap is always safe.
• Tower of Hanoi — 3, 5 or 7 disks. Solve it in the fewest moves possible.
• Four in a Row — against a friend or against the computer, which looks up to ten turns ahead.
• Pairs — 6, 10 or 18 pairs. The score is how few cards you turn over, not how fast you tap.
• One of Each — the 9×9 number grid, in Easy, Medium and Hard. Every puzzle has one answer and never needs a guess.
• Nim — take matchsticks from a row, and take the last one to win. Or switch the rule so taking it loses.
• Nonogram — 5×5, 10×10 and 12×12 grids. The numbers say which squares to fill, and every one can be proven.
• Chess — the full game against three strengths of computer, or a friend, with the whole game to look back through afterwards.
• Word Guess — 4–5, 6–7 or 8+ letters. The shorter the word, the more wrong guesses you get.
• Reversi — trap a line of discs and they all turn over. The corners decide it, not the count.
• Lamps and Walls — place lamps until every square is lit, and never let one lamp shine on another.
• Nine Stones — place nine, then slide them along the lines. Three in a row takes one of theirs.
• Mahjong Solitaire — clear stacked tiles in matching pairs. Every deal can be cleared.
• Oware — sow seeds round two rows of pits, and take any pit you make 2 or 3.

HINTS THAT EXPLAIN THEMSELVES

Every game can show you the best move and tell you why, naming the actual square, number or card that proves it. A Minesweeper hint points at the two numbers that make a square provably safe. A One of Each hint names the rule it used.

The hints also say how much they actually know. Tic-Tac-Toe and Tower of Hanoi are worked out to the end of the game, so what they say is fact. Four in a Row has around 4.5 trillion positions and cannot see that far, so it says "best guess, not a certainty" and how many turns ahead it looked. Chess is larger still, and says so just as plainly. None will pretend to know something it does not.

LOOKING BACK AT A CHESS GAME

When a chess game ends, Review plays it back in ordinary notation, with a graph tracing how the advantage swung — so you can go straight to the move where it turned.

Every move gets a verdict: Best, Good, Inaccuracy, Mistake or Blunder, with a card saying what the computer would have played instead. It is held to the same honesty as the hints: a proved mate is fact, everything else judgement at the depth reached.

Play on from here lifts any position out, so a game lost to one move can be replayed. You can also take a move back as you play, and switch on a check that asks before a move throws a piece away.

FIFTEEN MINUTES AT A TIME

Medhayate allows 15 minutes of play in any 5-hour window, adjustable between 5 and 20 minutes. This is deliberate, not a trial: there is nothing to unlock and nothing to buy. Sharpening the intellect works better in short, frequent sittings than in long ones.

The clock only runs while you are in a game. Browsing the library, changing the theme and looking back at a finished game cost nothing.

NOTHING LEAVES YOUR DEVICE

Medhayate requests no permissions at all. Without the internet permission, Android itself prevents it from opening a connection. There are no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. Your theme and your best results stay on the phone.

FOUR THEMES

System, Light, Dark, and Organic — warm cream, terracotta and sage.

PLAYABLE WITHOUT SEEING IT

Every board square tells a screen reader its position and state, and a hinted square says so. Four in a Row offers seven column controls rather than forty-two squares, and every card in Pairs has a spoken name. A chess square names the colour as well as the piece.